Monthly Archives September 2006

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This one goes out to all parents of toddlers everywhere (well at least whoever reads my blog anyway)…. HOW IN THE HELL DO YOU START POTTY TRAINING? The reason why I am asking is because my daughter is driving me crazy. Rewind the clock to roughly a week ago. My car was in the shop getting fixed so therefore we were all stranded at home on a rainy day. Gabby usually is up by 7:30 to go to daycare. Since I knew none of us were going anywhere I decided that I could sleep in for an hour or 2 at the most. Around 8:30 I woke up and went up for a shower. By the time I got dressed and went into her room it was about 9am. So to recap only an hour and a half later than what I normally wake her up. When I opened the door to her room I nearly vomited. She was covered from head to toe in poop. I'm really not exaggerating either. Imagine if you will poop all over her hands, arms, legs, feet, under her finger nails, hair, around her mouth (WTF???? I hope to god she did not eat shit)….I nearly died. I actually walked out of the room and went into Owen's room. I had to take a moment. I hoped that I really didn't see what I just saw, but when I went back in her room, reality was staring me in the face. I picked her up and plopped her right in the tub, clothes and diaper still on. I did not care at that point. I scrubbed her down until all of it was off her. The water was BROWN. I emptied the tub and refilled it and made her sit in it for about a half hour. Quite honestly I don't even think that was long enough, but since bleaching her skin was out of the question…it would have to do. My next move was to strip her bed down, I used a combination of Oust, Lysol, 409 and the vacuum to get everything cleaned up and smelling semi normal (although you could still faintly smell the poop). I put clean sheets on and everything was back to normal within a few hours. Now she has taken off her diaper before and peed on her sheets and it wasn't any big deal. Pee is MUCH easier to clean up then poop. As a matter of fact, she did that yesterday (take off her diaper and pee over everything). Now again today we had the poop incident. It wasn't as bad as last week, but it was still EXTREMELY DISGUSTING AND NAUSEATING. A little voice in the back of my head keeps telling me it is time to start potty training her. She seems to be giving off all of the right signals that she is ready, but I really don't know if I have any patience left in my body for this. I haven't had a decent night of sleep since way before I was pregnant, and Gabby just does not listen to me. This does not make for a good combination. So you can imagine my desperation. Please somebody…anybody….tell me how you got your kiddos potty trained. I need to know what works. Bribery? Extortion? I'm willing to try anything to avoid another surprise morning poop incident.

About a month ago there was a pizza place near my house that burned down (Milestone Pizza). The circumstances around the fire were very suspicious….a week before the fire all of the tenants from the apartments above the restaurant moved out. The day before the fire the pizza place lost its licquor licence. Yeah, I'd say that's more than a little coincidental. Here's a link to the article on WNEP.com (pops in a new window) Clearly the fire was ruled arson. Big surprise there. The owners probably torched it for the insurance money or something. This is becoming somewhat of a normal practice here in NEPA. Anyway, before this was "Milestone Pizza" it was a number of other names. The business changed owners several times. My family literally lived 5 seconds away from here, it was within walking distance so we were exposed to the changes. A few years ago my parents, Rich and I were having a debate as to which pizza in Wilkes-Barre was the best. For some reason, that pizza place came up (which at one time was named CJ's). My Dad made a comment about it selling "The million dollar pizza". We had no idea what this was. The rumor was that supposedly if you ordered "the million dollar pizza" they would deliver a pizza with a bag of drugs stashed inside of it. I don't know how true this is, but it goes to show you how reputable all of the owners were. Pillars of society, I tell you. I'm glad to see this place burned down. If the million dollar pizza is any indicator the place was probably full of trouble. Mr. Drug Picketer would be proud.

In my boredom with being home 24×7 for the last 5 weeks I don't have much entertainment other then watching the standard Directv channels (I'm too po' to afford HBO or Skinemax), watching grass grow, and/or watching paint dry. Just kidding. I'm too lazy to paint. Anyway, my new form of entertainment is thinking of stuff to look up in Wikipedia and see if someone actually wrote an article about it. As you may or may not know, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written and maintained entirely by its users and is free to use for all.

Let me just state first and foremost that I hate the entire medical profession. This post will probably filled to the brim of TMI girl things (too much information) but I'm highly pissed off and need to rant. About 2-3 months ago at one of my doctors appointments my Ob-gyn and I briefly discussed birth control options for after I had Owen. I told her I'd like to get my tubes tied and just be done with the baby making. I cannot afford, nor want anymore kids. Apparently if you want to have a tubal ligation and are under the age of 30 it is the doctor's job to talk you out of it. Why? I do not know. Most of them are in the business to make money and are notorious for unecessary procedures. Anyway she said "ok", but in a way that sounded more to the effect of "HELL FUCKING NO WAY ARE WE DOING THIS". She told me I'd need to sign a waiver, and that normally they do not recommend tubal ligations for someone "so young". Then proceded to say "what if you won the lottery tomorrow?" and kept putting these scenarios in my head of reasons why I would not want to get the tubal. No really. I am pretty damn sure I am done with having kids thankyouverymuch. I don't care if I was the last woman on earth and the human race depended on me to start procreating. There is no way I want more kids. Period. And this is my decision. Since Rich agrees with me, I figured there would be no problem in getting this procedure done. WRONG. Suddenly the doctor went from "ok" to all out refusing to do this to me. Listen, if for some reason I lose my mind and want another child (first, smack the shit out of me to bring me to my senses) I can adopt one. I'm sure there are plenty of kids already out there that need a good home. Anyway, the tubal is covered under my health insurance. The doctor suggested I do the IUD because it is a 5 year form of birth control that requires no remembering to take pills. Also, it supposedly is cheaper than the pill (WRONG! I did the math) The IUD is not covered under insurance and is 700 dollars out of pocket. 200 of which can be broken out into payments, the 500 is needed up front. Right. Let me just write a rubber check for you. The doctor initially told me there would be no problems with a payment plan, but now all of the sudden I need 500 dollars up front. So there goes that idea. I could try to go back on the pill, but it was giving me MIGRAINES. I mean these were blinding disabling headaches that made me want to cry. The only thing that felt good during one of those was going to bed or banging my head off of something. There is no amount of tylenol or advil that you could take that would make it go away. For a person with 2 kids and a job crunching numbers at a PC all day, I cannot afford to get one of these headaches. They take me out of commission. I don't know what else there is left to try. It has to be affordable and covered under my insurance. I was thinking about asking about that birth control patch thing, but seen recently now that its causing blood clots and other problems on TV. That's no good I just do not understand why they can't give me the damn tubal, I could have gotten it when I was in for my c section and it would have been covered under insurance and there wouldn't be an issue. Its my body, why can't I just do what I want to do?????? I found a quote that's rather fitting for this entire fiasco: Kelly Osbourne – "My teeth, my car, my vagina, my business." Anyway, I hope there's a solution otherwise I'll probably never do "it" again. And at this point that's fine with me.